Pulse

by John Lutz

  “There’s a mathematical formula for everything,” Nift said.

  “Like for how much longer you’ll live with that mouth of yours,” Pearl said.

  Nift seemed not to have heard her.

  The CSU techs said they’d done all they could until the body was removed, and left the tent.

  Quinn nodded toward the victim. “Notice anything about the panties? The way they’re rolled up at the waistband in back?”

  “She didn’t put them on,” Pearl said. “Somebody else did, after she was dead, and while she was lying on her back the way she is now. The panties dragged and rolled in back and didn’t go all the way up.”

  “I was wondering when one of you would notice that,” Nift said. “Very good, Quinn. Now, another question: do you recognize the M.O.?”

  Any cop who’d been involved in a serial killer case, anyone at all interested in serial killers, would recognize the M.O.

  So like the Daniel Danielle murders.

  Quinn nodded. Beside him, Pearl said, “Daniel Wentworth, aka Daniel Danielle.”

  “Or Danielle Daniel,” Nift said. “Depending on which sex he wanted to be at the moment.”

  “There’s not a lot of blood on the scene, either,” Pearl said, “considering what was done to her. Daniel Danielle was good at managing blood flow. Got a guess as to the actual cause of death?”

  Nift grinned at her. “I’d estimate that she was alive when all or most of the butchering was done. He wanted to share that with her. If she was lucky, she died of shock at some point before the abdominal wound.” Nift’s grin widened. “You look down where you’re used to seeing what musta been a huge rack of tits and see your insides instead, it’s probably quite a shock.”

  A cop near the door flap was giving Nift a fish-eyed look. Not much expression. Probably he knew Nift. Almost everyone who dealt with the city’s lower forms of life knew Nift, at least by reputation.

  Pearl moved over to see the newspaper page lying on the floor near Nift’s black leather medical case. There were bloodstains on it, but it was readable. The EVERYTHING SLASHED Macy’s sale with its play on the victim’s name.

  “I saw it,” Quinn said, before she pointed it out. “Sick sense of humor.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Nift said.

  “That’s for damn sure,” Pearl told him. “You don’t have the slightest idea.”

  Nift merely continued grinning at her. “I love getting under your skin,” he said. “No pun intended.”

  Quinn gave him a look, letting him know he’d gone far enough. Knowing dangerous ground when it started to shift on him, Nift stopped grinning.

  “Any sexual interference?” Quinn asked.

  “I’ll have to do the postmortem to know for sure.” Nift was all business now, tired of verbally poking at Pearl. “I can call you later with the details.”

  “Got an estimate as to how long she’s been dead?”

  “Not more than a few hours. But that’s an approximation. We can be more precise later.”

  Quinn looked over at the cop with the scarred eye. “You catch the squeal?”

  “Yeah, but not alone. They directed two radio cars over here. No nine-eleven call. An anonymous call direct to the precinct house. They took it serious.”

  “He must have left here shortly after the murder and made the call,” Quinn said.

  “He might’ve wanted there to be a show for us when we got here,” Pearl said. “Might’ve even watched us arrive. A shared experience. That’s how these sickos think. Ask Nift.”

  “Set a sicko to catch a sicko,” Nift said, not bothering to glance over at her. “Pearl’s right. The killer might be standing across the street right now, taking it all in. Maybe waiting for the body to be removed.”

  Quinn knew that what Nift said was true in some cases, but this killer was different. Always had been.

  If it was the same killer.

  Nift did a quick visual study of the corpse, head to toe, as if trying to fix everything in his memory. He flashed his nasty little smile. “Just like in the textbook chapter on the Daniel Danielle murders.”

  Quinn nodded. “What do you think? The methodology the same all the way through?”

  “Close enough. Would I swear this is a Daniel Danielle murder? No. I couldn’t call it that close. I never actually saw one of his—or her—victims.” He shrugged without seeming to have moved any part of his hefty little body. “And of course it couldn’t be a Daniel Danielle murder, Daniel Danielle being dead. Killed in a hurricane. Body never recovered.”

  “Tornado,” Quinn said.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Smaller.”

  “Copycat killer?”

  “Well, there’s that same lively sense of humor. Most of that didn’t get into the media. But I couldn’t rule out a copycat. They’re most likely to be inspired by infamous killers.”

  “That would give the killer a motive,” Pearl said.

  “Which is?” Nift asked.

  “He’s nuts. Like you are.”

  Nift chewed on his tongue and seemed to consider that. “No, not like I am.” He leered at Pearl. “Well, maybe a little.” He nodded toward the body. “One thing’s for sure—the killer’s got Daniel Danielle’s taste in women. Macy would have had the second best rack in the room.”

  Pearl took a step toward Nift. “You asshole.”

  Quinn raised a plate-sized hand as a signal for her to stop, which she did. They had more important things to consider than Nift’s bad manners.

  “Take a look at the vic,” Quinn told her. “Imagine her with her hair brushed back off her forehead.”

  “I don’t have to look,” Pearl said. “The resemblance struck me when I walked in the room.”

  In one way or another, the Daniel Danielle victims had all resembled Pearl. Quinn hadn’t liked that ten years ago, during the killer’s rampage of death, even though Daniel had never taken a victim in New York. He didn’t like it now.

  Nift stooped, then snapped his rubber gloves and peeled them off. He began arranging his instruments in his bag, preparing to leave. “When you’re done with the beautiful Macy, you can have her removed. She and I have a date for later.”

  When Nift straightened up and moved toward the tent flap, Quinn stood in the way with his arms crossed.

  “Something more?” Nift asked.

  “The missing breasts ...”

  “I rolled her over and looked under her, looked all over the place. The CSU had uniforms search the surrounding grounds. They will again tomorrow. But we both know the killer must have taken them with him. Like Daniel Danielle.”

  “Souvenirs,” Pearl said.

  “Or maybe more souvenirs,” Nift said, and strode around Quinn and out of the room.

  That was when Renz entered.

  His suit had taken the night’s strenuous activity pretty well and still looked as if he’d just put it on. The brilliant lights in the tent glittered off his gold accoutrements. Renz looked like what he was—a corrupt politician. Quinn wondered if, when people got older, they began to look more and more like what they were. Renz’s overstuffed features were beginning to resemble a rodent’s.

  “So Nift introduced you to Macy Maria Collins,” he said.

  Pearl made a note of the victim’s full name.

  Renz waited with feigned politeness until she’d finished writing. “College girl living in the Big City, maybe looking for a summer job.”

  “Where’d she go to school?” Quinn asked.

  “Someplace upstate. Wycliffe ... Waycliffe. Kinda place where you have to be either rich or smart to get in.”

  “Or both,” Pearl said.

  “Jealous?”

  “Not of Macy Collins. If you look close enough you might notice she’s dead.”

  Renz grinned and looked at Quinn. “She’s still got the mouth, huh?”

  Quinn shrugged.

  Renz flashed a gold cuff link and glanced at his watch. It looked like
a gold Rolex. “Gotta run. Late for a meeting.”

  “At this time of night—morning?”

  “Uh-huh. We all sit around with cards and chips. I interrupted the game to come over here. Thought you should see the crime scene. I knew you’d understand why.”

  Quinn did.

  “I’ll call you later,” Renz said.

  “No doubt.”

  Ignoring Pearl altogether, Renz nodded to Quinn as he turned, ducked his head into the folds of fat beneath his chin, and left the tent.

  Quinn and Pearl followed Renz and breathed in fresh morning air.

  The CSU guy in charge was still standing outside the tent, smoking a cigarette. Quinn almost said something to him about fouling a crime scene and then saw that it was one of those battery-operated cigarettes that look like the real thing.

  He was a short man, built like a miniature bull, with a thick neck and sloping shoulders. Quinn had worked with him before. His name was Bronsky. He waited with patient brown eyes for what Quinn had to say.

  “What’ve we got so far?” Quinn asked, thinking that after Renz it would be a pleasure talking with somebody like Bronsky. Crime Scene Unit types were almost always all business and no bullshit.

  “Looks like the killer wore rubber gloves, so we might as well forget about fingerprints,” Bronsky said. “So far, he didn’t leave much if anything behind. We might pick up more on him from the victim herself, try for some of his DNA.” He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and held it up for Quinn to see. “I just got off this,” he said. “We got her address from her purse, and we’re going through her apartment.”

  “Great,” Quinn said, wondering again why Renz wanted this one in the worst way.

  “There are signs of the killer washing up some in the bathroom, but still with the gloves on. Plenty of smudgy prints here and there throughout the apartment, some bloody. He musta gone there after the murder.”

  “He was letting us know that,” Quinn said.

  “We did lift other prints from the apartment, but they’re probably what you’d expect—the victim’s, neighbors’, former tenants’, the super’s ...”

  Quinn waited until Bronsky finished with the list. All the prints would have to be matched with the people who’d made them. The prints that couldn’t be matched would be placed in a separate file, in the faint hope that someday they’d help to convict the killer. Tedious work, but necessary.

  “The bloody prints. Could you say if they were a man’s or a woman’s?”

  “No way to tell. Because of the gloves.”

  Quinn sighed. “So maybe the lab will come up with something.”

  “Maybe. We’ll get the usual hair samples from the carpet. A few nail clippings from the bedroom. But my guess is they probably won’t amount to anything useful.” He rotated his head on his thick neck. “Not as much blood here, or in her apartment, as you’d think.”

  “M.E. said she probably went into deep shock when she saw what he’d done to her. Her heart must have stopped shortly after that.”

  Bronsky pulled a face that made him resemble Edward G. Robinson in an old tough-guy movie. “Jesus! Not a nice man.”

  “The M.E. or the killer?”

  “Killer. I already know the M.E. is a prick. You going in now to look over the apartment?” The question sounded almost like a warning about what was waiting inside.

  “I was about to,” Quinn said.

  Bronsky took a drag on his cigarette that meant nothing. “Two bedrooms with two twin beds in each. I heard somebody say the victim shared the place with three other students. The roommates all went home for the summer. What if they’d been here, though? All four girls?”

  “Richard Speck,” Quinn said.

  “That’s what I was thinking. Would this creep have killed all of them?”

  “Why not?” Quinn said.

  “Those other girls should know that,” Bronsky said. “Realize how lucky they are to be young and still alive. They might be more careful the rest of their lives. More appreciative.”

  “It’ll give them something to talk about,” Quinn said. “Then in a few days or a few weeks they’ll go back to being themselves.”

  Bronsky made his Edward G. Robinson face again. “Why do you figure that is?”

  “We’re all who we are,” Quinn said.

  “Yeah, I guess we have to live with that.”

  “And die with it,” Quinn said.

  He left Bronsky, who continued puffing on his faux cigarette, blowing faux smoke. Six feet away from the dead woman who was real.

  6

  Central Florida, 2002

  It was barely audible but growing louder. Something was striking metal, over and over. It was like a steel drumbeat, and he walked to it.

  Daniel Danielle kept his head down and his eyes squinted almost closed as he trudged west. The wind blasting from behind him was fierce, and the heavy rain obscured his vision.

  The joy of escape filled his mind. He would make it all the way, he knew. Fate was on his side. Destiny belonged to him.

  The ground couldn’t absorb the rainfall, and half the time he was splashing through pooled water. A few times the howling wind knocked him off his feet, but he always struggled to a hunched standing position and continued his trek west, away from the wrecked prison van and the dead guards. He was armed now, with the small-caliber gun that had been taped to the ankle of the one who’d pretended to be a fellow con, and with a nine-millimeter Glock handgun from the holster of one of the dead guards. He’d managed to find the right key on the cluster of keys dangling from a dead guard’s belt, and he was no longer handcuffed. He was still wearing the prison’s orange jumpsuit, and that could be a problem.

  The metallic banging sound was ahead of him now. Much closer. Curious, he altered course slightly and moved toward it.

  An angular dark shape loomed ahead in the driving rain. As he drew near, he saw that it was what was left of a house. Most of the roof had come down, and part of what remained was flapping violently in the wind against what looked like a section of steel ductwork. The mad drumbeat got louder as Daniel approached.

  The central part of the house hadn’t collapsed. A man appeared from the wreckage, bent forward against the wind, and motioned with his arm for Daniel to come to him. He was a tall, rangy guy with a hawk nose and gray hair. His shirt was torn half off him and flapping like a flag.

  As Daniel got closer, he saw the man’s gaze fix on the orange jumpsuit.

  “You here to rescue us?” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth so Daniel could hear. Daniel could see the dread knowledge and doubt in the man’s eyes. Rescue workers didn’t wear that kind of uniform.

  “Sure am,” Daniel said. “From everything.”

  He used the Glock to shoot the man in the chest. He went down hard on his back. A blast of wind rolled him to rest against part of the wrecked roof that was jammed up against the base of the house.

  In the wind, the bark of the Glock had been barely audible.

  Daniel smiled.... Rescue us? Dumb cracker!

  He picked his way through the wreckage to the central core of the house, what used to be the bathroom.

  His luck held. A woman was there, huddled tightly beneath a white porcelain washbasin. It was somewhat quieter in the enclosure, and the wind was partially blocked.

  The woman was in her fifties, overweight, and frightened as hell. Through a curtain of rain-plastered hair, she studied Daniel with wide blue eyes. Had those eyes seen what happened outside in the wreckage?

  Daniel smiled. “I killed your husband.”

  The woman said nothing. Didn’t even change expression. In shock, Daniel decided. His fault? Or the hurricane’s?

  He left her and made his way to what used to be the kitchen, rooted through the wreckage until he located the right cabinet and found the drawer where the knives were kept. He chose the largest one, testing the blade’s edge with his finger to make sure it was sharp.

  He returne
d to the makeshift shelter and found that the woman hadn’t moved. He squatted down next to her and began to cut away her clothes with the knife. She put up no resistance. The maelstrom of storm and events had stolen any sense of reality. She was having a bad dream that would eventually end. This man was here to save her; he was a doctor, cutting away her clothes so he could treat her injuries. There was no other explanation. None that she wanted to explore, anyway.

  She couldn’t hear him over the wind, but could see that he was laughing. He twisted her around so she was on her stomach and skillfully sliced the tendons behind her knees. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Then he began having fun.

  An hour later, the wind had died down. At least it was no longer yowling. It was still coming out of the east, and was hard enough to drive curtains of rain when it gusted.

  Daniel left the woman and found in the house’s wreckage what used to be a bedroom. It was easy to locate some of the husband’s clothes.

  He stood naked in the searing rain for a while and let it wash most of the woman’s blood from him. Then he put on the farmer’s clothes. The guy had been well over six feet, so Daniel had to roll up the pants cuffs. The short-sleeved shirts were a little baggy but fit okay. The orange jumpsuit he wadded and shoved into what was left of a dresser drawer.

  These people couldn’t have lived in this isolated ranch house or farmhouse or whatever it was without some kind of transportation. He walked the perimeter of the house and saw what might have once been a garage. There was a vehicle near it, lying on its side.

  Daniel walked over and saw that the wind-tossed vehicle was an old Dodge pickup truck. He considered trying to shove it upright, but he found that he couldn’t budge it.

  That was when he noticed chrome grillwork peeking out from under the wreckage of the garage. He walked over and saw that it was the front end of a late-model Ford SUV. Suffused with a new strength, he began throwing wreckage this way and that, digging the vehicle out.

  When he was finished, and the SUV had a path out to where the gravel driveway was clear, he went to the dead man and found keys in his pocket. One of them was a car key. Good. That meant there’d be no need to hot-wire the ignition.